Delighted to Be Here

Have you ever found yourself very glad to be exactly where you are? One night I was overcome by that sensation in the midst of household chores and wrote a poem to celebrate the magic and delight of existence.

Street Light for the Moon

It was almost midnight

When I took the garbage out to the curb.

Pivoting under the soft white illumination

Of the corner street light

My eye caught the flutter

Of a magnificent moth.

With noiseless ease of flight

She hovered about the lush blossoms of four-o'clocks,

Gathering what sweetness she could

Here and there among the flowers.

As I stepped closer

To observe the sight,

The street light became

The magical light of the moon

And the moth was a fairy

Of busy and delicate purpose

Seemingly unaware of my presence.

Looking up at the front porch

I saw myself standing on the steps.

In an instant

I was snapped back to myself,

And from the vantage point of the front steps

The moon shifted back to street light.

The fairy faded to the natural beauty

Of the moth.

Looking beyond myself

I saw street light

Garbage pail

And moth,

But looking within

I held the memory

Of flowers opening to the moonlight

Welcoming the fairy's touch.

                                             ~ CK
 

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons


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Images from a Deep Horizonless Night

Sometimes when a writer is prompted to produce something on the spot, characters just spring up from somewhere.  I discovered that I had some characters lurking in my subconscious that I previously had no inkling of. One day my friend Joe Saling posted the beginnings of a poem on his blog The Word Mechanic. He shared the first three lines of a poem:

“Standing on the stateroom balcony
Peering into the endless black
Of a horizonless night”

Joe said he could get no further with the poem and asked his blog readers to try to finish it and send him whatever we came up with.  I had the picture in my mind and just began writing. This is what came out:

Standing on the stateroom balcony
Peering into the endless black
Of a horizonless night

I couldn’t help thinking of that dame that walked up to me

Just a few hours before.

She had the look of a wanderer

But a wanderer who knew her way around.

Only tonight she was a lost kitten

With eyes as deep as that horizonless night.

“I know it must be fate, Mr. Marlowe,” she said to me,

“That on this night, when all seemed so hopeless

I should find you here.”

That’s what she wanted – hope on a hopeless night.

I had seen that look before.

Sometimes that look would lob a zinger

Right into the pit of my stomach.

Another needy client

Short on hope,

Short on insight,

Even shorter on cash,

But long on virtue.

I promised her I would see what I could do.

I wasn’t so sure about this beau she told me about.

I didn’t know if he was on the up-and-up,

But he obviously meant something to her,

And now he was nowhere to be found.

I don’t know why I agreed to it –

Yeah, I know why –

It’s because I’m a sucker.

A sucker for a cry for help,

A sucker to track down dead-beat scum,

A sucker to thrash out a little justice in this godforsaken city.

A sucker for the deep dark eyes

Of a helpless girl

On the edge of another horizonless night.

Several  months later, long enough for me to have put the stateroom poem out of mind, my friend Jim High from Mississippi posted on his Facebook page the following:

“To provide a little enjoyment, I would like my Facebook friends to comment on this status, sharing how you met me. But I want you to LIE!!! That's right, just make it up. After you comment, copy this to your status so I can do the same.”

This was my immediate reply:

It was a warm night in July. Some dame had sent me out to find the creepy low life that had promised to get her beau away from the Tupelo Mob.  Seems the green horn had fallen for the oldest con game in the book.  I didn’t particularly want to drive my ’71 Nova across the state line into the sweltering Mississippi night, but those soft brown eyes grabbed me in a way that I knew I had to put tomorrow on hold until I could see this one through.  I pulled into the Delight Hotel without a clue as to where to find the bum or how to get that dame’s lover out of harm’s way.

“Hey, mister,” I said to the guy behind the counter of the two-bit flop house. “You seen this guy?” I showed him the photo the soft- eyed blonde had given me of her lover boy, Preston.

“Yeah, I seen him,” he said. “Headed down Highway 145 about two o’clock this afternoon – said he had some business in Verona”

“Thanks, pal,” I said.

“Name’s not pal – name’s High. Jim High.

And that’s where the partnership began.

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I am no psychoanalyst, but I am interested in what it might mean when characters take form within our imagination. When we dream, our subconscious mind will often latch on to archetypal figures to create a story. Often that dream story can tell us something important about ourselves if we can stop to hear what our subconscious is saying.

Here I am confronted with some images that I am sure I saw in the movies. There is a detective trying to figure things out. There is a beautiful, vulnerable and engaging young woman with captivating eyes. Not pictured is the boyfriend who somehow falls in with the wrong crowd and there is the thug whose actions are endangering the young man and have the young woman in a state of grave concern. What am I to do with this information?  Do I try to take a look at what these images might mean, or do I continue to write it out and see what comes of it? Sometimes it’s enough to make a fellow stop dead in his tracks, take a deep breath and peer into the endless black of a horizonless night.

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Imagination

“Imagination is more important than knowledge”
~Albert Einstein


There is a small poster tacked up on the wall near the doorway just to my left as I sit at the computer. It is a black and white picture of Albert Einstein with the quote that you see above. My wife found it several years ago and kept it as a reminder while we were trying to mold our daughter’s education. Our daughter is now in college on an art scholarship – so far imagination has served her well (I should add that she is also very smart and hard-working).

I think about imagination from time to time, sometimes glancing up at Dr. Einstein’s picture prompts a return to imagination. Sometimes things get so serious, and work becomes so necessary, and other things become so Very Important that imagination gets relegated to a back corner.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a Jungian workshop titled, “Jung, Tolkein, and the Archetypes of Middle Earth.” In the first session, the presenter, Jungian analyst Dr. Janice Maxwell, talked about J.R.R. Tolkein’s prolific imagination and how he was able to tap into such a deep inner reserve in crafting The Lord of the Rings and other remarkable works of fantasy. One need only to google “JRR Tolkein” to see how very much his imagination has inspired so many. Indeed, many writers have used their imaginations to show us what possibilities are available for our lives as individuals and as a society.

My friend David Brazzeal and his wife, Sanan, are currently living in Paris. David has a wonderful entry on his blog today about modern art and imagination. The title of the entry is "Practicing Imagination" and is well worth reading. In fact, it inspired me to spend a few moments here musing on imagination.



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